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OPINION

Hannah Cox: Severe mental illness should rule out death penalty

The state of Texas recently executed Adam Ward, a man with a long history of severe mental illness. Tennessee has also pursued the death penalty for individuals like Ward. Occasionally, these individuals are executed. Other times, the cases are litigated for decades, ending in a sentence less than death, but not before putting victims' families through a process that delays legal finality and costs taxpayers millions.

Take the Tennessee case of Richard Taylor, convicted in 1981 for joyriding and robbery. While incarcerated, Taylor killed corrections officer Ronald Moore after prison officials stopped giving Taylor his anti-psychotic medication. He was sentenced to death.

In 2003, Taylor was granted a new trial but allowed to represent himself, calling no witnesses and introducing no evidence. The jury sentenced Taylor to death again. After his conviction and death sentence were reversed again in 2008, Taylor received a life sentence — 27 years after his first capital trial.

Though most individuals with severe mental illness are not violent — they are more likely to become crime victims than perpetrators — a lack of access to treatment can lead to delusions, disassociation and sometimes violence. And in Tennessee today, there is simply not enough access to treatment.

The result is that law enforcement has become increasingly responsible for these individuals. In a 2014 column in the Tennessean, Davidson County Mental Health Court Judge Daniel Eisenstein wrote:

'Mental health treatment has in many cases been shifted from state-run mental health facilities and community programs to courts, jails and prisons.'

To complicate matters, those with severe mental illness do not always recognize their illness, leading them to fire their counsel and represent themselves, like Taylor; or they may simply refuse to participate in their defense.

And what about the risk of wrongful conviction?

A 2012 University of Michigan study on wrongful convictions found that roughly 70 percent of the defendants who had a mental illness or disability confessed to crimes they did not commit, whereas only 10 percent of defendants without a mental illness made false confessions. Individuals with these illnesses are more susceptible to police pressure and may not understand the charges against them or their Miranda rights.

Still, when an individual who has a severe mental illness is guilty of committing a heinous crime, there must be consequences. But is the death penalty appropriate? A coalition of mental health advocates and others called the Tennessee Alliance for the Severe Mental Illness Exclusion believes that individuals with severe mental illness who commit these crimes should be held accountable, but with appropriate sentences — life or life without parole, not the death penalty.

And there is precedent. In the United States, we don't execute minors or those with intellectual disabilities. Excluding individuals with severe mental illness from the death penalty on a case-by-case basis (also under consideration in North Carolina and Ohio) is just smart policy as victims' families are spared decades of litigation, costs to taxpayers are reduced, resources can be dedicated to mental health care and support for police, and Tennessee can move toward a criminal justice system that is better for all.

Hannah Cox is the coordinator for the Tennessee Alliance for the Severe Mental Illness Exclusion. She is a former policy advocate for the National Alliance on Mental Illness, and a long-time champion for those with mental illness.

Read or Share this story: https://www.knoxnews.com/story/opinion/columnists/2016/04/16/hannah-cox-severe-mental-illness-should-rule-out-death-penalty/90892942/